Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Facts of the matter

Take a moment and put yourself in my shoes. I've never been to Pismo Beach. Maybe I passed it on the way to or from San Francisco, but it's never been high on my list of "gotta go" vacation spots.

That's not likely to change.

Today four people were shot by a man who entered a Denny's and just started blasting. Two of the four people died there and the suspect also killed himself.

I'm in Pismo Beach running SAT shots for my station.

Serious, it takes a lot to rush out and cover a story like this, but on the other hand, it doesn't take so much that I can't do it. We all know there's a lot of pain and suffering in the world, let's just be clear that I'm not looking for sympathy for me. I'm just doing my job and really trying to be careful not to become so used to what I see.

It is a struggle to not lose my ability to feel the outrage that people should feel over these deaths.

So, if you're me, then you get angry, but you do your job. You just treat the anger as "a matter of fact" and cover the story.

You're not paid to "feel" anything.

While you're skipping around in my shoes, without giving it a lot of thought, you also bump Pismo Beach down lower on that list of destinations that you'll ever want to visit.

It's just another "matter of fact", there will probably never be a happy memory of Pismo Beach that could stand by itself in my mind. I don't discount that there might be a moment of joy that could block out what's floating around in there right now.

It just probably won't ever get the chance.

This place, just like dozens of other places are always going to be part of a memory of a story that involved violence. . .hmm, could be denial, but I know I was being conservative when I described it as "dozens".

Okay. So, if you've done a good job of putting yourself in my shoes and you've imagined that you've seen everything I've seen. Maybe you understand why you'd be sitting in the satellite truck and writing this last line for your blog.